Plan a STEM trip

The author’s daughter in front of one arm of the LIGO Interferometer, which stretches for 4 kilometers. Photos by Linda Jenkins

Many parents are looking for STEM immersion activities for their kids that are fun, hands-on, and unique. In the technology-focused Tri-Cities of Richland, Pasco, and Kennewick, scientists and engineers from all over the world come to work and research in fields as diverse as geology, physics, and astronomy. The Tri-Cities, with its comfortable lifestyle and abundance of unique family-friendly activities, is a great place to plan your STEM spring break.

The REACH Interpretive Center at dusk

Look what I found!
We’ve come to a Columbia mammoth excavation site in arid and windy Coyote Canyon. It’s an ongoing project of the Mid-Columbia Basin Old Natural Education Sciences (MCBONES) Research Center Foundation. My husband and 6-year-old twins made the three-hour drive over from the west side with me, and I suspect that my family’s contribution to the volunteer dig team might be negligible. Still, we were greeted with a welcome and an immediate job for the kids, who bound off happily.

“We are all citizen scientists,” geologist George Last, board member and volunteer coordinator of MCBONES, said. Last is also a senior research scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and a geology professor at Columbia Basin College.

The white noise of the strong desert wind and swirling dust carries over our conversation as Last tells me about the researchers’ work here. “We’re looking for what the distribution of mammoth fossils can tell us about Ice Age flooding,” he said. The Coyote Canyon mammoth site is a real-world STEM lesson, an opportunity for visitors to experience the scientific method while learning about geology, paleontology, forensics, and more.

I look over at my twins, whose happy voices ring out over the quiet, thoughtful conversations of the other volunteers.

“This site is a sandbox for teachers and students to develop an understanding of science, technology, and math,” he says. Both of my kids are excited by their discoveries; they show me small bits of what could be rocks, rodent bones, insects, or other fossils.

The author’s son at the MCBONES dig site

Teaching patience
We head up the hill to the dig house, a small building where there is a classroom with laboratory equipment, interpretive displays, and fossils being cleaned and catalogued.

Last speaks kindly and respectfully to kids, answering their questions as if it were his first time thinking about the topic. My son, a big dinosaur fan, is buoyed by his newfound knowledge. “Mom, a mammoth is like an elephant,” he interjects when I ask about dinosaurs again. This is paleontology, not archaeology. Got it.

We meet Bax Barton, curator of special collections at the University of Washington’s Quaternary Research Center. He’s also a research associate in the paleontology division of the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, and director of the research at the Coyote Canyon site. “I’m a mammoth guy,” Barton says. “Kids think I know a lot about dinosaurs because I work at the Burke, but I don’t.”

Public tours of the dig site are held from March to October, with plans for more educational programs as the MCBONES foundation expands.

The music of the cosmos
My family is at the LIGO Hanford Observatory in Richland, touring with a group of space-time research enthusiasts, many of them well-versed in the language of gravitational waves and the state-of-the-art optical and laser technology at work here.

“We’re still waiting to discover the first radio signal from another life form,” Education and Outreach Coordinator Dale Ingram of LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) said. There are many questions from the group and Ingram provides careful, thorough answers to all of them.

My twins, who are as savvy and well-informed as any 6-year-olds, seem to understand that we’re visiting a place where they wouldn’t usually be allowed.

“This is cool, Mom,” my daughter tells me. She and her brother have discovered the hyperbolic funnel, a fun activity for kids with a little physics thrown in. Along the way there are pulleys and mirrors, things to see and manipulate.

Data collection at the LIGO Hanford Observatory

LIGO is a project to collect data on gravitational waves from space. There are two of these observatories in the United States, one in Richland and one in Livingston, Louisiana. It’s a collaboration of a number of academic institutions, including Cal Tech and MIT, along with over 80 other scientific institutions, with the aim to study theories about the first moments of space and time — all the way back, they hope, to the “big bang.”

A team of some 40 workers — physicists, mechanical engineers, post-doctoral students, and international scientists, monitors the data collection 24 hours a day. The actual lasers stretch 4 kilometers in two directions. Crews work in noise-controlled rooms and the sensitive instruments hear everything, from distant ocean waves, to windstorms, volcanoes, and even passing traffic.

LIGO offers free public tours twice a month and private tours for groups of 15 or more. The tour is ideal for middle school students and up, but all ages are welcome.

A theater for the stars
My kids talk a lot in movies, and that’s perfect for our visit to the Bechtel National Planetarium at Columbia Basin College in Pasco. The planetarium shows science-focused films on a 36-foot domed screen. Visitors sit under the dome, which can simulate a 3D effect, surrounding everyone with images and sound.

Before each film, professors from the college lead introductory talks with theatergoers under the dome.

“My goal is for kids to see that science is exciting,” Kristy Henscheid, director of the planetarium and a biology professor at Columbia Basin College, said. “All of our movies are educational. They’re affordable, too.”

Tell us a story
The REACH Interpretive Center sits on 18 acres overlooking the river in Richland. Outside, gardens highlight area wildlife and serve as a rotating gallery for sculptures created by student artists. The REACH is a hybrid museum, theater, performance, and special events facility. Information about the cultures and history of the Tri-Cities is exhibited in over 10,000 square feet of gallery space.

Gallery II’s focus is The Manhattan Project, Hanford, and the Tri-Cities area’s role in World War II history. This exhibit is especially interesting to my husband and other adults, with its rare video footage, detailed vintage photographs, and oral history.

My daughter is drawn to the baby mammoth skeleton. After her work at the dig site in Coyote Canyon, she has context for what she’s seeing.

For the youngest visitors, The REACH has an outdoor learning area with hands-on activities for active play.